Something Has to Give (13 page)

It was like descending into a cave. Cool stone blocks surrounded her. There were no windows and only a few doors—large wood-plank and iron bolt varieties, sunk into dense stone archways to either side of her. The massive cellar doors at the top of the steps behind her had been left standing open, but the sunlight seemed
loathe to accompany her. The constables pulled and shadow swallowed her, the cold raising gooseflesh up both arms. Torches lined both walls, but still the hall grew darker, until the only illumination became small pockets of flickering torchlight interspersed amongst the shadows. The air smelled smoky and dank. Water dripped from the ceiling, making the flames dim even more. Some sputtered and hissed, and the sounds intermingled with other much more frightening noises.

Somewhere beyond her sight, a heavy door bumped closed. Chains rattled and clanked. A groan echoed up the passage, bringing every fine hair on
Kaylee’s tense body to standing on end. She heard a distant smack and then (every bit as distant) the responding cry. In the cell right next to her, the low grunting groans of a man in pain were abruptly silenced with a hard slap and a woman’s snarling, “Take it, bitch!”

This wasn’t real,
Kaylee struggled to remind herself, but right now she just could not make herself believe it. She forgot to breathe, remembering only when the tightness deep in her chest turned into a dull head-pounding ache. And then the constables pulled her into the alcove of a doorway, and suddenly, they were standing at her apparent destination.

Taking a torch down off the wall, one constable pushed the massive door open. He walked into the utter blackness ahead of her, making a slow circuit around the chamber while he lit the torches inside.

It was a prison cell, probably no larger than her living room back home, but filled with contraptions that made her stop breathing all over again. She saw the shine of iron manacles on the floor and dangling from the walls. There were stocks, a rack, a cage only large enough for her to occupy on hands and knees, and a wooden horse with a sharply triangular peak. Restraints suspended from the ceiling showed that particular device was not meant to be bent over, but rather to hold its victim perched upon a most uncomfortable seat.

Kaylee
shivered. Her legs locked, but the remaining constable dragged her inside, ruthlessly providing her with a much closer inspection of ropes and pulleys, a spreader bar affixed to the floor with an adjustable impaling bar rising out of the center, and a series of shelves lined with its eye-popping assortment of dildos and anal plugs, the sizes and dimensions of some of which were truly horrific. There were even hooks, bulbous on the penetrating end instead of sharp.

And the implements—oh God,
Kaylee shuddered all over again. Opposite of the door she had entered through was a second, the small barred window of which let in just enough dancing torchlight to cast a ghoulish glow over every imaginable contrivance a Dom could ever desire. Hanging upon the broad wall were a wide variety of whips, tawses, paddles and canes. A steel bucket stood off to one side, fully stocked with leather-wrapped birches and slender bark-stripped switches, still soaking in the briny water that guaranteed to keep them both willowy and sturdy for extended use.

Her knees tried to buckle, but the constables kept her upright and brought her to the
pièce de résistance
. It stood in the center of the room: a steel bondage bench, thinly padded at the knee rests, with bars and restraints for every part of her body, including her waist and her neck.  From the moment she was affixed to it, it would leave no room for her to wiggle, struggle or kick.

Kaylee’s
gaze snapped from one horrible corner to the next, unable to believe what she was seeing. She couldn’t count the number of times she had fantasized about being in a place like this, and yet Kaylee could not find one shred of eroticism in any part of this.

She couldn’t
breathe…she couldn’t breathe…

“At this point,” one constable told her, “you have two options.”

Kaylee looked at him, her eyes huge.

“Runaways are never treated gently.” Dear God, he was smiling as if he were enjoying this. It made him look positively demonic in the flickering light of the torches. “If you want to make this as easy and as painless as possible—”

“Which will not be entirely painless, no matter what you do,” the second added.

“—I suggest you strip down to your costume and assume a penitent pose before your
gaoler gets here.”

Everyone stopped when the rattle of keys clanked into the lock in the second door.

“Too late,” the constables said in unison, all too cheerfully, and Kaylee shrank from everyone as the Gaoler entered the dungeon.

Kaylee
had always been an avid reader. In her mind, there was nothing better than curling up late at night with a cup of hot chocolate and good book. She had often read of heroines who took one look at a man only to feel their hearts skip a beat. Well, Kaylee had seen many a fine specimen of manliness in her life, and that had never once happened to her.  She'd always believed it a cliché…until now.

The
gaoler came into the room clad entirely in black: leather pants and boots, leather cuffs and a pair of black and white wrist bands on his arms, and a hood over his head that revealed only his unsmiling mouth and the dark intensity of his eyes. He wore no shirt, showing thickly muscled arms and a ripped six-pack the lines of which she hadn’t known existed outside a Bowflex commercial.

Kaylee
took one look at him and her heart didn’t just skip a beat. It stopped entirely. And fell, all the way down into the pit of her stomach, where it lingered, cowering for a place to hide and shaking, pretty much like all the rest of her was doing.

“You,” the
Gaoler stated to both constables. His voice grew ominous and soft. “Leave.” They did, and once the door had closed behind them, his dark eyes returned to her. A corner of his mouth curled. “How are you doing? Enjoying your vacation?”

She was so unnerved, she just stood there, staring at him.

“I just got back from mine. Today, in fact. About forty minutes ago. I’m not even scheduled to work today, but when they brought me your file and asked if I wanted to, I thought, what the hell. I spent four  hours this morning trapped on a plane next to a screaming six-month-old. Guess whose ass is about to pay that price? The word for stop is red. The word for slow—” his dark mouth twisted into an even darker smile, “—is airplane. You have five seconds to take off all your clothes and get on your knees. And don’t even think about not swallowing, or we aren’t just going to end with the bullwhip, we’re going to start with it too.” He flexed the fingers on his right hand and Kaylee heard his knuckles crack. “One…” he counted, a corner of his mouth lifting into a predatory smile. “Two…”

Kaylee
bolted.

She didn’t remember hitting the door or throwing it open so hard that it sent a rain of paddles falling off the wall. She didn’t remember running back down the hall, either. Or shoving past both startled constables, or jerking sideways when one tried to grab after her, or ripping her arms out of their reach. They ran after her, calling for her to stop, but
Kaylee didn’t stop and she didn’t say anything beyond
onions
—that she pretty much shrieked all the way up the dungeon steps and back out into the full bright whiteness of the shadow-banishing sun.

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